We recently had the pleasure of visiting with Jeremy Turner to discuss a topic we’re both very passionate about: the importance of purpose-driven messaging. In this article, we’ll summarize and expand on just a few of the highlights. Read on to learn what purpose-driven messaging is, why it’s crucial for your ministry’s growth, and how to begin crafting your own messaging to turn employees, donors, partners, and stakeholders into brand advocates.
Jeremy Turner is the Managing Director of EPIC Consulting, where the mission is to engage, encourage, and empower entrepreneurs, nonprofits, and small businesses to be the change we wish to see in the world. One of EPIC’s services is to help organizations define their current and future goals, and then to create relevant messaging to drive the company forward and recruit like-minded stakeholders. While the process can be challenging, it all boils down to one word—the three-letter word our toddlers repeat until we demand they stop, and yet, sometimes wisdom comes from the mouths of babes.
Why?
In this post, we’ll discuss how to find and communicate the heartbeat of your ministry’s purpose to breathe new life and growth into your organization.
The Why Defined
The concepts covered in this post come from Simon Sinek’s book Start With Why. Sinek’s message to corporations is an inside-out method of communicating your brand’s core purpose for existing.
Many companies use data-driven messaging centered on statistics, facts, and graphs to communicate what they do and how. This organized messaging format feeds our short-term memory and speaks to our logical brain, so we will comprehend there is a need and a solution to which we can contribute long enough to write a check.
But when we begin with why we do what we do presented as a story, we showcase a belief system stakeholders can grab onto at a much deeper level. At Reliant Creative, we’re passionate about the power of story to engage the human, emotional brain to teach, inspire, and spark a connection that can last a lifetime.
In Reliant Creative’s free Purpose-Driven Strategy course, CEO and Founder, Zachary Leighton defines an organization’s Why as the “ . . . purpose, cause, or core belief.”
As ministry leaders, our purpose is to spread the Gospel to save lost souls and fulfill the Great Commission because we believe in the teachings of Jesus and Christianity. While this reflects the mission and vision statements of many ministries, Jeremy explains why this is too broad.
“I would challenge is it not a basic expectation to serve God and share the Gospel? Is that not a basic expectation? . . . As a ministry, if you’re not serving God and the Gospel, you’re not a ministry, so that’s just the price of admission.”
Jeremy prompts his ministry, nonprofit and for-profit clients to go much deeper with a series of reflection questions to define a more focused message. The goal is for clients to communicate the specific purpose for which their organization exists within the broad parameters of the Great Commission and other ministries using similar gifts and to serve paralleled populations.
Ask yourself why you do what you do. Ask why again. And again. And again. By this time, you might just get to a message so pure and simple that a child will understand. If a child can understand, then your stakeholders, employees, beneficiaries, and donors will also grasp your ministry’s purpose and embrace your vision—and that’s when genuine change occurs.
After you’ve determined the core of your organization’s objective, the next step is to capture your purpose in a word picture that tells your story to potential stakeholders. But before we tell you how, we’ll practice what we preach and tell you why your ministry needs to share your heart as a story.
Why Story?
The lifeblood of Reliant Creative is the belief that stories mobilize. And nothing inspires action like stories of God’s work. Revelations 12:11 tells us that Satan’s ultimate defeat comes by the power of the blood of the Lamb inherent in stories of God’s faithfulness.
EPIC Consulting and Reliant Creative partner on the biblical belief that storytelling is an inherently human activity because God created us this way. Stories transfer shared history and beliefs. The Bible is called “God’s Love Story” because stories make us feel like we belong, and through Scripture, we know we belong to our Heavenly Father.
Jeremy shares two other tangible reasons a purpose-driven story is a beacon for every organization. And I’ll begin the discussion with a story!
Focal Point
One cloud-covered evening, I turned off the bathroom light and headed toward the bed, only to realize my digital alarm clock was under my Bible. I hesitated, dreading the natural consequences of my carelessness. I lifted one foot from the bathroom linoleum to the soft bedroom carpet. After a sigh and a prayer for my safety, my other foot joined the first, so I was now adrift in a sea of carpet with nothing to guide my next steps. Without my bedside numerical nightlight, all I could do was continue and hope for the best. I lengthened my arm as much as I could, hoping that just once, my fingers would find the bed before my toes.
A clear, simple purpose statement is your ministry’s light in the darkness, guiding your next stop. Jeremy explained it gives “additional focus on what you do, why you do it, for whom you do it, with whom you seek to do it like that. So, it takes these really broad parameters and narrows down to create a more specific focus.”
Just like blindly groping my way to bed only to bruise a toe is a slow, painful way to start a good night’s rest, running a ministry without a clear, memorable purpose statement is both inefficient and risky. Current and potential stakeholders in your ministry need a simple focal point to permeate through the darkness to all levels of an organization. You’re much more likely to get where you’re going when you can see clearly.
And by the way – which did you relate to more: walking fearfully across the bedroom in the dark, or a business statement of efficiency and risk? #StoriesTeach.
Filter
When I was young and single, I decided I wanted to marry a country boy with a 9-5 job, and police officers and military men were an automatic “no” for me. I had nothing against city boys, and I have great respect for servicemen, but I wanted a stable routine and a home in the country without the fear of becoming a young widow. I knew who I was, where I wanted to go, and how to filter out even the most handsome distractions that didn’t align with my vision.
Just as “quiet life in the country,” was a word picture for who I wanted to be and a filter to keep me on course, so is your ministry’s purpose statement. According to Jeremy, a clear, memorable purpose statement is “a filter that allows an organization to keep their programs and services and stakeholders properly aligned towards a defined and sort of unifying vision. And it’s your primary filter through which you run new ideas or potential partnerships to see if you are a proper fit.”
By contrast, an unclear purpose statement “is a cause for a lot of inefficiency within organizations because without this focal point, this really strong and well understood why that permeates all levels of an organization, there’s less impact because organizations are floating all over the place, trying to do many things, inserting too many people by offering many programs and many services.”
Now you know your organization’s “why” is a clear, simple, word picture expressing your core purpose. And you know story is effective as a focal point and filter because God made us this way. Next, we’ll help you get started crafting your ministry’s purpose-driven story.
How To Craft Your Ministry’s WHY
Jeremy provides four ideas to keep in mind as you craft your purpose-driven messaging to transform your employees, donors, and partners into brand advocates: inspiration, empathy, clarity, and data.
Simon Sinek wrote that “There are only two ways to influence human behavior, manipulation, and inspiration.” Jeremy explained the difference between the two as matters of focus and reader impact.
“Manipulation focuses on the need of the organization and how they need you to fill it, and they’re gonna guilt you into feeling terrible about yourself and your life and your spiritual health if you don’t want to help them.” And he exposed the elephant in the room when he said, “we see commercials on TV that show the dying children and the maimed animals and, personally, that absolutely does not inspire me. It makes me feel terrible. I can’t even watch those. I would rather have something that is more positive, uplifting and inspirational in nature that shows me how I can be the change, and then I’m more likely to engage that organization.”
So how can your messaging be that inspiration people want to engage with? Jeremy explains that inspiring messaging “focuses on the need that is filled by the organization, and how they’re encouraging your partnership to sustain impact and become a part of the solution to become the change as it were. It’s a seemingly minor difference, but it’s huge as far as engagement. You can absolutely guilt somebody into something. Typically, it’s gonna be short term. It’s gonna be more transactional, and it’s gonna be a lesser amount. If you inspire someone to feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves, and that even though they’re not the ones out with the shovel in the field digging the well, that they’re actually there and they’re part of the solution, that’s really going to impact the lives of many people for years to come.
Now you’ve allowed them to see beyond their physical parameters, and they’ve seen that they can be a part of something much bigger, and because you’ve inspired them, they’re more likely to give more money for a longer period of time, so long as you keep them engaged. The inspiration piece can’t be transactional either, where I’ve inspired you one time and now I’ve got you hooked. So, catch you later. I’m gonna go inspire someone else. Inspiration is like a shower; It’s recommended daily.”
Your Turn
At Reliant Creative, we define a why statement as a word picture describing a truth put into action that creates a result. Our formula for a purpose statement or why statement is: When we do this, this thing happens.
Below are a few of the questions Jeremy would ask you as an EPIC Consulting client. Consider your answers to the questions below and draft your mission’s core reason for existing. Go beyond what you do, or the methodology of how you do it, to craft a clear statement of impact.
- Why you?
- What is your legacy?
- What is the legacy that your organization seeks to leave behind?
- What is the purpose for forming in the first place?
- What gap or need do you seek to fulfill?
- How are you different from other ministries who do the same thing or serve the same population as you?
Next Steps
Has this information been helpful? Would you like to explore purpose-driven messaging further? Here are some resources to explore to drive your ministry forward through the power of story.
Listen to the Podcast: The Importance of Purpose-Drive Messaging and Communication
Take the Free Purpose-Driven Strategy course from Reliant Creative
Contact Reliant Creative for story-driven marketing services.
Contact EPIC Consulting for help defining where your organization is headed.
